Thursday, August 26, 2010

LT Day 3

Lula Tye - Minerva Hitchney (10.2)

Night two we decided we weren't going to pitch our tents. And we had the shelter to ourselves so we just sleep on our bags in the open cool air. It was a little unnerving at first, but if you think about it, it's not like a tent is a fortress. The nicest thing about it was that it made the pack up in the morning a breeze and we got out of camp early. 1/3 of a mile down the trail a cute little girl comes up to me and says, "have you been here before? it's beautiful, you can swim and jump in from that rock over there." And turns and points over the pond. As many of you know, I'm not a fan of kids, but this one was a OK with me.

(Little Rock Pond and the Stone the girl pointed at)

We decide to pump water at this spot on Little Rock Pond. Heather mentions that it's a good thing I decided to come out because without me they'd be stranded without their pump. Dustin decides to give his pump a try without the large handle that had broken the day before. After a few minutes of struggling to get the piston pulled out he requests my Leatherman, and within seconds the entire pump was in pieces.

The trail skirts the beautiful shoreline and i stop a few times to take photos. After leaving the pond you ascends up a short climb until you reach what looked to be a pile of scrap metal that previous hikers had twisted and sculpted into some form of modern art.

(Metal Art)

From the first set of metal art the trail becomes muddy as you stroll through low lying greens and a small stone wall lines the trail to the north for a half a mile before you come out to this log bridge.



From here the trail then descends into this beautiful stretch of red pines and we walk into this crazy mass of cairns.(Cairn Land)

We walked around the sculpture and took a bunch of photos before pressing on. Awhile later we run into a second city of cairns at the White Cliff Trail Spur. A quick decision later has us heading down the 1/8th of a mile spur to a view and take a long warm lunch in the sun

(More Cairn Art)

After lunch we head back up the spur, run into Lonestar and we talk with him a bit about his AT Thru hike. "A lot of time and drugs were spend here," spoken in a twang only a Texas man could have. He's southbound with another, been on the trail since June, expect to finish around December 1st. At which point he's going to move out of Texas where he's lived for 46 years and go to Colorado to do some more hiking. Inchworm gives him some advice about the trail ahead and he tells us about the amazing waterfall swimming pool just ahead before we part ways. From the second cairn land the trails drops for what seems like 2 miles before we cross over a stream just before the falls and low and behold, at the base, a wonderful swimming spot where we all decide to take a quick dunk.

(Swimming Spot)

One last climb up Bear Mountain where i take it nice and slow and snack on the occasional raspberry, sharing a few with Clothespin to encourage her up the steep slope. As the trail crests and rolls down into another valley we all wonder where in the world the shelter could be. And how much longer it would be before we were able to put some food into our starving bellies. The shelter comes shortly after cheeseburgers, french fries and milk shakes are discussed. We decided that although the Shelter to ourselves last night was pretty cool, we wanted to tent tonight so we found the tenting area and set up shop for the night.

The Killington Krew rolls in shortly there after. Tells us about their day on the trail, we watch in awe as they have to blow up their stove to pressurize it before cooking. From the distance it looks like they were starting a forest fire. "Turkey lighter, comin' in hot" They're plan is a 15+ mile tomorrow so they depart before sunset, we have a 10 ourselves so we make our way to sleep before 9pm as well.

Quote of the Day
"I gotta get away from those drunk crackheads" - Lonestar

1 comment:

leeapeea said...

TWO times swimming? Awesome. Looks like a pretty artistic section of the trail. Love the pics of Cairn Land.